Existing systems and methods for clinical testing suffer many drawbacks from the perspectives of patients, health care professionals, and taxpayers or insurance companies. Today, consumers can purchase certain specialized tests from various locations for consumer use. For example, a consumer can purchase a pregnancy test at a pharmacy and review the results. However, such results are to be viewed by the consumer, and are not to be relied on by the consumer's physician in forming a diagnosis or treatment plan.
Additionally, if a test result is to be conducted and to be relied on by a doctor, physical samples are transported to a laboratory where the tests on the samples are performed. For example, blood from a fingerstick or venous draw is typically collected from a subject at a hospital or physician's office. The blood sample is shipped to a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certified laboratory which performs the tests and analysis that is provided to the patient's doctor. Such techniques are cumbersome and cause significant delay in providing the result of a test ordered by a physician, especially because the physical specimens must be transported to a different site for analysis. Moreover, the sample collection sites often have limited hours which further causes inconvenience to patients.
Conventional techniques are also problematic for certain diagnoses. Some tests are time sensitive, and the results of which may take days or weeks to complete. In such a time, a disease can progress past the point of treatment. This impairs a medical professional's ability to provide quality care.
Traditional systems and methods also affect the integrity and quality of a clinical test due to degradation of a sample that often occurs while transporting such sample from the site of collection to the place where actual analysis of the sample is performed. For examples, analytes decay at a certain rate, and the time delay for analysis can result in loss of the sample integrity. Different laboratories also work with different qualities which can result in varying degrees of error. Each laboratory can have its own set of references that further introduce a wide range of variability in coefficients of variation. Additionally, preparation of samples by hand permit upfront human error to occur from various sample collection sites. These and other drawbacks inherent in the conventional setup make it difficult to perform longitudinal analysis with high quality.
Furthermore, the conventional techniques are typically not very cost effective. For example, delays in test results lead to delays in diagnoses and treatments that can have a deleterious effect on a patient's health. For example, a disease may progress further, resulting in the patient needing additional treatment. Payers, such as health insurance companies and taxpayers contributing to governmental health programs, end up paying more to treat problems that could have been averted with more accessible and faster clinical test results.